This is Belgium

This country is just a little bit crazy. Even after being here over four years, I am still amazed at some of the things I see and hear. Recently I've had my camera with me when I went out so I was able to capture a few of these crazy/annoying things to share with you. Sorry for the disjointedness of it all, but here goes...

***They have been tearing up the sidewalk and road on our four block street for the last two months! There is mud and dirt everywhere, including all over our apartment from having tracked it inside.

The construction has made the driving here even a bit crazier than normal. Notice below that in a one lane area (because the other lane is taken up by loose cobblestones and the construction zone) there is a biker, motorcycle, car and bulldozer all trying to navigate their way around each other.


I know a lot of people are excited about the changes Obama might bring to the US. And while some might be great, after living in Europe for awhile, I think it is important to share the other side of what all this 'the government keeping everyone employed' looks like. Notice below that a man is painstakingly laying each and every cobblestone into place. Yes, cobblestones are quaint, but the problem is that it takes a long time and alot of work to pave an entire street's sidewalk with cobblestones. I repeat, this work has gone on for over two months and they still are not even done with it. And they have not laid one new pipe or wire. They just tore up the sidewalk only to re-lay it again. Imagine how many tax dollars it took to pay for this guy to work for two months to finish four blocks of sidewalk.

And the problem with doing all this back breaking work is that the cobblestones are only held together with some type of sand mixure. Now let's put 2 and 2 together. We live in a place where it rains all the time. And what washes away sand? So the result in just a short while will be a sidewalk like the one below on a neighboring street. And they will never come back to fix it, so every time we walk down this street we have to avoid the loose cobblestones so that we don't twist our ankle.

***And now a little story -- our friend's husband was in incredible pain with a kidney stone. While he was screaming out in agony, she drove him to the hospital only to find the entire entrance locked up and dark with not a single light on anywhere. Her husband ended up passing the kidney stone in the car while she was searching for another hospital. It turns out that the hospital had closed down its emergency wing for two weeks while it underwent construction. The only thing was that they didn't put up one sign to let anyone know that or any information as to where the next closest hospital was. Thank goodness our friend was only passing a kidney stone instead of delivering a baby!

***Only in Belgium are they so used to dogs peeing and pooping everywhere that they put up a statue in honor of it.

***The other day I did a double take as I saw two cars look like they were about to run into each other at 1mph. The trams were backed up for some reason so each car had tried to pass them only to be left in a game of chicken.

***A recent e-mail Kyle sent me from work -- Outside my window just now, I heard the siren of an ambulance that clearly wasn't moving. I looked to see why, and it was because in front of the ambulance was a bus that had stopped to pick up a passenger, and remained stopped while the driver sold the passenger a ticket. Better that the STIB get its 2 euros than the guy in the ambulance make it to the hospital!

***This photo was taken in Madrid, but it always makes me laugh. How often must the cleaning crew having to come and empty this trashcan?

***During the second week Kyle and I were here we arrived at a store promptly at their opening hour of 9am. We were surprised to find that as we walked in the store, so did some of the employees, ready to start their work day. We wandered the aisles as employees cleaned the floors, had their morning coffee and re-stocked the shelves. Apparently they have never heard of coming in before the customer to get that kind of thing done. Below is a very common sight in the grocery stores around here. They re-stock during store hours which can create quite an obstacle course with a shopping cart. (This was taken on a Monday afternoon at 3pm).

Luckily enough Belgian beer helps all this craziness to make a little bit more sense!